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Charles Williams made a lot of these, circa 1983-1998: pencil holders. They are still haunting me, after seeing them at the Intuit Art Center in Chicago a little over a month ago. The functional capacity of these objects is what gets the whole aesthetic sensation going. A concept so banal and delivered in such strange little packages, the whole thing feels almost not-art, which is kind of where I like to live aesthetically. In the Land of Nod, I guess, the place where knickknacks and sculptures and pieces of litter and jewelry and pill bottle lids, etc. all combine into a sort of bracing nothingness. All of that pseudo-philosophy right there makes Mr. William's whole project feel like a catatonic junk-drawer and a mesmerizing memoir combined. A lot of the holders are fashioned from the extruded plastic he took from his job at IBM, off the factory floor. Foamy detritus like candy-colored tumors, like toys melted in a fire. These castaway non-objects are often combined wit